Sony Is Aggressively Wooing Hardcore Gamers

Audience members watch a demonstration titled "Batman:
Arkham Origins" at the Sony news conference show on the eve of
the opening of Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), in Los
Angeles, California, June 10, 2013.REUTERS/David McNew

To a backdrop
of the biggest cheers heard on the first day of E3 2013, Sony
adopted an unexpectedly aggressive approach with the PlayStation
4 which will, in equal measure, please hardcore gamers and leave
Microsoft wondering how they got themselves into such a tangle
over their attempts to kill off the second-hand games
market.

At the Japanese company's typically bombastic E3 press conference
– the last act of the traditional day of press conferences prior
to the show's proper opening – we learned that the PlayStation 4
will go on sale before the end of the year at a cost of £349
(significantly less than the Xbox One's £429 RRP), and that it
will completely eschew any of the Draconian digital rights
management (DRM) measures which Microsoft has mooted for the Xbox
One, leaving PS4 owners just as free to sell or redistribute
second-hand games as PS3 owners are now.

We also now know what the PS4 looks like – pleasant enough, if
unremarkably boxy, and surprisingly small. Games-wise, the PS4
certainly has plenty of support: according to Sony Computer
Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton, there are currently over
140 games in development for it, of which 100 will launch in the
first year of its existence – around 40 will be PS4 exclusives.

A question-mark still remains as to how many games will be
available at launch — and that's one area in which the Xbox One
may well have the upper hand, as Microsoft showed a slightly more
compelling portfolio of full-blown exclusive games at its press
conference earlier in the day – unsurprisingly, given that
developer kits for the Xbox One have been with developers longer
than their PS 4 counterparts.

Despite that, Sony clearly has a much stronger line-up of smaller
(and invariably quirkier) download games from indie developers in
the pipeline for the PS4 than Microsoft does for the Xbox One.

The PS4's top games

He kicked off by unveiling The Order: 1886, developed by Ready At
Dawn (previously best known for two PSP versions of the God Of
War franchise). A steampunk effort set in an alternate Victorian
London, it looked intriguingly atmospheric.

Yoshida also showed new snippets of the games highlighted at the
PS4's reveal: Killzone: Shadow Fall, racing effort Drive Club,
cute platform effort Knack and InFamous: Second Son – the latter
looked pretty stunning.

It's debatable, though, whether any of those count as
console-sellers. It appears that we will have to wait a while for
Sony's killer IPs, like Uncharted, God Of War, LiitleBigPlanet
and Shadow of the Colossus, to make it to the new console.

But that shouldn't require too much patience, thanks to ample
support from third parties. Ubisoft again showed its hugely
impressive Watch Dogs and the pirate-centric Assassin's Creed:
Black Flag.

Square Enix impressed with a demo of Final Fantasy Versus XIII,
and announced that Final Fantasy XV will be coming to the PS4,
along with Kingdom Hearts III and the MMO Final Fantasy XIV
(which will also be playable on the PS3).

Sony teased a Mad Max game, to be published by Warner Bros.
Warner Bros# Batman: Arkham Origins also impressed.

As at the PS4 reveal, Electronic Arts was absent (even though at
its own press conference it confirmed that FIFA 14 will come to
the PS4 as well as the Xbox One), but 2K showed a glimpse of NBA
2K14.

Sony also announced a "partnership" – currently nebulous but
potentially significant – with Bethesda Softworks, the first
fruit of which will be a PS4 version of its forthcoming MMO, The
Elder Scrolls Online.

But the most appealing and exciting game on display was one that
will also ship for the Xbox One: Bungie's Destiny. Sony's press
conference did at least boast the first Destiny gameplay demo,
and the cross between a first-person shooter and MMO (with
conspicuous hints of an RPG thrown in) looked innovative and
seductively playable.

Not just about the big games

Amid the social networking-driven controversy about its antipathy
towards second-hand games, Microsoft faced a separate, less
justified accusation of not supporting indie developers.

Which certainly isn't a charge you can level at Sony – in recent
years, it has conspicuously championed indies (winning a hatful
of Baftas for Journey and The Unfinished Swan in the process).

And it unveiled an incredibly long list of download indie games
under development for the PS4, which will help plug any gaps in
the console's launch window games line-up.

Sony has been quick to cotton onto the desire among indie
developers to innovate and take risks, and that should be a
driving force behind the PlayStation 4.

Prioritising gamers rather than dogma

After Microsoft unleashed a Twitter-storm when it revealed its
intentions to kill the second-hand games market in interviews
after the Xbox One reveal, then created further confusion with
apparent backtracking over whether Kinect would be used as a
means of facially recognising users authorised to play its games,
and suggested that gamers would at least have to log onto the
internet once a day, Sony was expected to follow suit with some
form of control over used games being sold on, albeit less harsh
and more understandable.

The argument went that surely Microsoft would never have taken
that particular step without some inkling that Sony would, to an
extent, follow suit.

But Sony gleefully applied the skewer to Microsoft's discomfort
(after Microsoft carefully avoided the subject and didn't even
mention Kinect at its press conference).

Jack Tretton raised the biggest cheer of E3 so far when he
announced: "The PlayStation 4 won't impose any new restrictions
on you. The PS4 supports used games – we believe in the model
that people embrace today with the PS3.

In addition, it doesn't need to be connected: if you enjoy
playing single-player games offline, the PS4 won't require you to
check in online."

At the end of the press conference, Andrew House added a final
barb: "Concepts like true consumer ownership and consumer trust
are central to everything we do."

Those seeking evidence for such assertions could point to the
announcement that the popular PlayStation Plus subscription
programme, which brings benefits such as discounted and even free
games, plus cloud saves, will carry over from the pS3 to the PS4
as is, and will give PS4 owners immediate access to Drive Club PS
Plus Edition when the console launches, plus three free download
games – Don't Starve, Outlast and Secret Ponchos – in the three
months after launch.

But the PS4's streaming PS3 backwards-compatibility programme,
powered by the Gaikai technology that Sony bought last year,
won't be ready until 2014.

Microsoft will undoubtedly do some hard thinking about just how
determined it really is to outlaw second-hand games, and will
fight back in the run-up to the Xbox One's launch. Plus it will
make a lot of noise about the quality of its launch-window games
portfolio.

But by positioning itself as the gamer's friend and asserting
that the consumer is still king, even in this connected era, Sony
has given the PlayStation 4 the clear upper hand over its deadly
rival at this point in the proceedings.